OpenAI's advertising team has undergone seven restructurings in less than a year—a remarkable pace for a unit that only began piloting ads in February 2026. The team now numbers approximately 140 employees, and about 37% of them previously worked at Meta, one of the world's largest digital advertising companies.

A Meta alumni network inside OpenAI

The most prominent hire came in March 2026, when OpenAI brought on Dave Dugan as vice president of global ad solutions. Dugan spent more than 12 years as a VP at Meta before making the move. His mandate centers on building specialized teams organized by industry vertical, along with a group dedicated to working with advertising agencies—an arrangement similar to how large digital ad platforms have long organized their sales operations around industry categories and agency relationships.

Fast growth, missed targets

The numbers show real traction. By late August, OpenAI's advertising business had reached a $1 billion annualized run rate, a figure that extrapolates the current pace of revenue across a full year. Advertiser counts climbed as well, reaching around 60,000 by early October, with much of that growth driven by price cuts aimed at small and medium-sized businesses, a tactic advertising platforms commonly use to widen their advertiser base.

Still, growth has not kept pace with the company's original ambitions. OpenAI's early internal projection called for $2.4 billion in ad revenue for 2026, a figure the company is likely to miss. The distance between that target and the current run rate is one measure of how steep the scaling challenge remains for a unit still in its first year of selling ads.

Going global, going visual

OpenAI's ad operations have expanded to more than 60 countries. In October 2026, the company also launched visual ads and has partnered with resellers to strengthen its position in the market. Resellers—firms that sell a platform's ad inventory on its behalf—are a standard part of the digital advertising industry, often used to extend a business's reach into markets and customer segments it does not cover directly.

Advertiser feedback so far has been mixed. Some advertisers report that performance compares favorably against competing platforms, while others point to problems with measurement and relevance—the same criteria advertisers typically weigh when deciding where to allocate budget across platforms.

Why ads matter to OpenAI

Advertising is a strategic bet for OpenAI rather than a side project. The company carries high operating costs, and ads are meant to become a meaningful revenue stream to help offset them. For now, ads remain behind subscriptions and enterprise sales as a source of income. How the organization settles after seven restructurings in under a year—and whether advertiser complaints about measurement and relevance persist—are among the operational signals to watch as the business moves through the remainder of 2026.